“Wasn’t meant to.”
Blythe and the baby were riding in the SUV with Hank and Carol. Blythe made Jace promise that he’d drive the speed limit, because she knew, with the baby in the car, Grandpa Hank wouldn’t go a mile over it.
“I don’t want to get too far separated from you two,” she told him.
Tucker walked up to the truck and put his hand out. “What?” Jace asked.
“Give me the keys.”
“Uh, nope. I’m drivin’.”
“I hate the way you drive. It’ll take us an extra hour to get there with you behind the wheel.”
“Which is precisely why he’s driving,” Blythe told her husband before she kissed him goodbye. “There’ll be hell to pay if you get out too far ahead of us,” she said to Jace. “Don’t you forget it, either.”
Tucker grumbled as he walked around to the passenger side of the truck, but Jace didn’t miss the smile and wink he gave his wife.
What he’d give to have that with someone. Every time he thought he was getting close, it didn’t work out. Was that his penance for the accident? Maybe if he and Tucker could talk about it, if he could say how sorry he was, maybe his life would begin moving in a positive direction, one with love in it.
They were an hour into the drive before either of them spoke. Jace knew they had to talk, but he wanted Tucker to be the one to start the conversation. After a while he decided Tuck was waiting on him.
“How much of that night do you remember?” Jace finally asked.
“Bits and pieces. I remember more about that day. I remember how angry I was with her parents whe
n they told me they wouldn’t let her marry me. I had to get out of that house and away from them. When I think back on it, I was just as mad at her. I didn’t want to admit it at the time, but it was obvious Rosa didn’t want to marry me any more than her parents wanted her to.”
Now that they were talking about it, Jace wished they weren’t. This was going to be more difficult than he’d imagined, and he imagined it being impossible.
“She played us against each other,” Tucker said in the direction of the passenger window.
Jace turned to look at him, but he couldn’t see his brother’s face.
“I came to the same conclusion,” Jace agreed. “When you drove up that night, she was begging me not to end it with her. I figured she was telling you the same thing when she ran toward the truck and begged you not to leave.”
“You were wrong about that,” Tucker said softly.
They drove in silence a few more miles. “When did it start?” Tuck asked him.
“We were always friends, I mean, all three of us were, since we were little kids. But it changed when we got into high school. She used to talk to me. At first it was about you, and then it wasn’t. She knew how competitive we were.”
“I thought I wanted to marry her.”
“I gotta tell you, up until Thanksgiving Day when I heard you talking to Dad about it, I didn’t think you two were that serious. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I heard you tell him what you were planning. I called her while you were still talking to him, and I was furious. The whole day, I couldn’t think about anything else.”
“How did you end up over there?”
“She called me and begged me to meet her. I agreed, but only to end it with her.”
“How did she get you to change your mind?”
“Can’t say that she did. You came back while we were still talking about it.”
“She told me she was in love with someone else.”
“I know, Tuck.”
“She was trying to get me to look at her, and I wouldn’t. I couldn’t stand the sight of her.”